The Girl in the Mirror
by foxyapple
Summary: Sephiroth has a dream of a horrific death, not knowing what is soon to haunt him. But why did he dream an event that actually happened, and who is the strange girl in the mirror?
1. The Ghost

The Girl in the Mirror  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the FF7 characters used in this story. However, I do own Hollene who is to become a main character in the story later.  
  
o0o  
  
Sephiroth panted in exhaustion as he climbed the twisting stairway that seemed to go on forever. The ten year old nearly collapsed, he was forced to tackle the winding stairs rather than the easy option- taking the lift.  
  
The boy's eyes were fixed on the back of Hojo's greasy head which he longed for something big and heavy to throw at him, which would knock him flat out or even better... kill him.  
  
He must be possessed by the devil...  
  
Sephiroth's thoughts were interrupted by Hojo sharply turning around and giving him an evil glare as if his thoughts were read aloud.  
  
No way... he is the devil!  
  
Hojo turned around once again and grabbed him by the shirt. "I know what you are thinking, Sephiroth. And before you try or think anything else, just remember that I am much stronger than you are." Her turned on his heel abruptly, and carried on walking.  
  
The two of them reached the top of the stairs, and Hojo began trudging down a long, narrow corridor with doors all around. He removed a keycard from his blood-stained lab coat pocket, and slotted it into the slit beside the door at the very end. The metal door screeched open and Sephiroth hesitated with caution. "This will be your room for now." Hojo sneered, giving the small boy a sharp push. "And don't even attempt to escape." He slammed the door and locked it fast.  
  
Sephiroth flicked the dim light on to the fairly small cell. It was a dull and dismal room, with pure, crisp white walls. There was a tiny single metal bed with a thin mattress atop it. There was also a toilet and sink in one corner, and in the other there was a two-drawer dresser and a mirror. They were there because Hojo thought he should look 'presentable' as it would ruin his reputation if the 'specimens' looked scruffy.  
  
A tiny window next to the bed revealed the typical Midgar scenery. A large fenced-in group of tatty slums made from bits of junk was included, where some of the poorest people lived- trying to make a few measly gil to feed their families. Sephiroth could also see a huge towering, clogged-up reactor. There were signs of smoke drifting in the air, polluting the atmosphere. Midgar. What a beautiful place.  
  
Sephiroth's room was on one of the middle floors of the extreme building which was so high it looked as if it was disappearing into the clouds. He could just about make out what was on the ground way below him, but it was getting dark which made it even harder for him to see.  
  
The small boy rolled onto the bed and curled his body up tight. He hated his life, and everyone in it. He had never spoke to another kid for as long as he could remember, and nor was he allowed to. The others were treated reasonably well, he presumed. Better than him, that's for sure.  
  
Mako tests every day and constant pain. That basically was his life. He had been kept in the building as a specimen for as long as he could remember, and it was like hell every waking minute.  
  
Sephiroth began to feel heavy, he was extremely tired so he rested his head on the pillow and fell into a deep sleep in less than ten minutes.  
  
"Where am I?" Sephiroth wondered. He was in the oh-so-familiar laboratory where he went to have the dreaded Mako tests. There was a skinny girl who looked a couple of years older than him, hoisting herself up onto the table and Hojo was sneering at her expense.  
  
"First Mako test, eh? I wonder..." He paced around the room, frantically scribbling notes on his clipboard and looking the girl up and down.  
  
"Perv!" The girl muttered under her breath.  
  
"Professor, should you really start her on Mako while she's so young?" A young female assistant with flowing blonde hair persuaded.  
  
"Further tests have shown that there is absolutely nothing to fear... we need to go ahead with these tests for our research." Hojo replied, coolly. "And besides, the tests have shown that the Mako will have a different effect on the girl than to anyone else."  
  
"Now Hollene, this might hurt a tiny bit but I can assure you that some extra tests has shown that you are perfectly fine." The assistant smiled, flustered, at the girl- practically repeating everything that Hojo had said before. "So I'll see you later." She briskly walked out of the huge lab, before giving Hojo a suspicious glare.  
  
"You'd better not hurt me! Before I came here I mastered in karate!" The girl spat, with attitude.  
  
"Well lets put this karate to the test..." He began carefully inserting Mako into a machine with a row of syringes. The disgusting slime-green Mako slowly filled up in each of them. "Don't move a single muscle, or there will be pain."  
  
Hojo grabbed her arm and turned the machine on. The syringes jolted towards her lily-white limb coming closer and closer...  
  
Suddenly a group of SOLDIERS burst through the doors, one of the SOLDIERS was clenching a gun in his hand while others tried to hold him back. His eyes were white, as if they had rolled out of their sockets. There was a trickle of blood running out of the corner of his mouth.  
  
"Professor, he's gone completely insane- we only put a little bit of Mako in his drink, and now he's uncontrollable!" One of the men trying to hold him back jabbered.  
  
"You fools!" Hojo yelled. "Mako is lethal. Lethal!" The girl sitting on the rusty tabletop looked scared, and her face turned from white-ish to deathly pale.  
  
The SOLDIER fought back the others, jabbing them with his gun. He began firing at random objects in the lab, starting at one end and destroying everything with machine-gun bullets.  
  
Then it happened. The SOLDIER pointed the gun at the teenage girl who hid her face and screamed. The other two SOLDIERS tried to force the gun away even more, but it was no use- he took aim and fired.  
  
The girl's sharp high-pitched screams echoed through the large room, and assistant scientists ran for cover out of the room- shaking. Hojo stood on the sidelines scribbling on his clipboard as more and more bullets of the lethal machine-gun were fired at the girl who was near to death.  
  
There was a loud thump where the girl hit the floor and her blood ran crimson.   
  
Sephiroth woke up on the floor. He had obviously fallen out of his bed in the horrific dream. He was lying in a strange position, and he could see under the bed seeing as he had left the light on.  
  
There was a funny sensation in his leg and he found that it was totally dead, so he had no other choice but to lie there and wait for the morning as he knew that he would never in a million years be able to get back to sleep.  
  
Sephiroth looked under the bed. There was nothing there except for a blunt pencil. He gasped, there was a name scratched on the wall under the bed. A very familiar name. Hollene.  
  
Sephiroth jerked up with fright, gritting his teeth in pain. Hollene was the girl that had been living in the room before him, the girl that had died.  
  
He suddenly became wary, his eyes searched the room, darting from one shadowy corner to the next- just in case she was there. He thought that maybe it was just a big coincidence, surely it was impossible...  
  
Or was it? Sephiroth saw the most haunting sight he had ever seen. As he stared into the mirror, a ghostly girl with a short, creamy-white blood- stained dress and charcoal black hair stared right back at him. She wasn't transparent like ghosts are known to be, she just looked like a normal girl- but with chalk-white skin. He didn't recognise the ghost at first, but then he realised...  
  
It was her.  
  
o0o  
  
sugary-flames: Du du duuuuuur! Please, please, please review! I read every review I get. (Well doesn't everyone?) Besides, if I get more review than my sister I can brag about it to her! He he he! 


	2. Real

sugary-flames: Thankx to everyone who reviewed the last chapter. I have only just wrote the next chapter and have been maniacally updating each of my fanfictions.  
  
Someone asked me if I loved Sephiroth? Well, I'm not madly in love with him. He is only a game character. I do think he is pretty cool, even though I can't beat him. Any tips, anyone?  
  
Oh yeah, in the story Sephy will start as a child and after a while I'll do a '8 years later' thing. So don't think it's a long and rambling story about the young Sephiroth who sees a ghost. Okay, I'll shut up now because I don't want to give the story away!  
  
Well anyway, for the time being here is the next chapter. Enjoy!  
  
o0o  
  
The small boy watched as the girl spookily stretched a bony arm out of the mirror and then gracefully slunk her whole body out of the mirror so she ended up crouched on top of the dresser. The girl then jumped off, her hair hiding her heart-shaped face, and she stood up to her full height which was a couple of inches taller than Sephiroth.  
  
In one hand was a gleaming kitchen knife.  
  
"I've been like this for ages, do you know how that feels?" She hissed.  
  
"Get the hell away from me!" Sephiroth dived backwards onto the bed, the springs groaning. "What do you want?"  
  
She walked closer to Sephiroth, "I don't want anything, I just want my life back."  
  
"I must be seeing things." He muttered. "Any minute now I'm gonna wake up."  
  
The girl dropped the knife. "Oh, god. I'm sorry, I don't know what I was doing. I mean, how could I kill you if you're like me. You know, a ghost."  
  
"I'm not." Sephiroth replied, bluntly.  
  
"Then how come you can..."  
  
The girl stopped when he saw the way Sephiroth was squinting his eyes at her. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. "You... are..."  
  
"Hollene?" The girl questioned, tossing her ebony hair behind her pointed shoulders. "Who are you?"  
  
"Sephiroth." He mumbled. "I saw you in my dream. You were shot by a crazed SOLDIER with a machine gun."  
  
Hollene looked at Sephiroth in amazement. "How... did you know that?" She gaped.  
  
"I don't know." He frowned. "How did you?" He pointed to the mirror.  
  
"The mirror is my world, if you like. It's exactly this room, only I can use the mirror as I kind of doorway. A ghost's world to the real world. Sounds strange, doesn't it?" She raised her finely-plucked eyebrows.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Do you believe me, that I'm really a ghost?" Hollene asked, suspicious.  
  
"I've got enough evidence." Sephiroth replied. "So, what was it like being here when you were alive?"  
  
"I hated it. I mean I had this lovely assistant called Naomi, and she made out like there was no pain involved whatsoever. But then Hojo wanted to try a 'little experiment' on me. He said that he had been searching for years for someone like me, it did not sound good." She shook her head.  
  
"But why are you so different from other people?" Sephiroth said.  
  
"Why do you think?" Hollene gestured to the mirror. "Hello? The Mako would kill me, and bring me back as a ghost. But, he wouldn't totally kill me- he would be in deep trouble if he killed a specimen. I know he has my body somewhere doing god knows what with it. Maybe one day he'll bring me back to life, but that could be decades away.  
  
"Go and see him!" Sephiroth suggested.  
  
"Believe me, I've tried. But nobody can see me. People can hear me though. Say I picked up an object, it would look as if it were levitating. I don't know how you can see me though, I know all specimens have something disturbing about them, they don't just pick random kids and people off the streets. Maybe you can see ghosts." Hollene replied.  
  
"it's something much deeper than that, I know it." Sephiroth muttered. "Hojo just won't tell me."  
  
"So do you see Hojo a lot?" Hollene asked.  
  
"Too much. He's my permanent assistant, if you like." Sephiroth replied.  
  
"Wow, what a bummer." She sighed. "And I thought I had a bad life. I was always causing havoc and demanding out of this place, I constantly wished I were dead. One time, when I was Professor Gast's specimen, I was left alone in the lab for a few minutes while he was called out to deal with an emergency. I found a sharp knife in one of the drawers and..." She showed Sephiroth her scarred wrists. "Professor Gast rushed in just as I did it, and I was rushed into the hospital ward immediately where I was bandaged up and I recovered."  
  
"Oh, god." Sephiroth gasped.  
  
"I wish had died then and there." Hollene continued, "I never planned to die and then come back again like this. That's if I am dead." She quickly changed the subject. "I've been here since I was about five. How about you?"  
  
Sephiroth thought for a minute, "I think I've been here since I was born. About ten years." He replied.  
  
"You're ten? You look much younger, no offence. I'm thirteen, by the way." Hollene stated.  
  
"I won't look young for long." Sephiroth replied. "Soon I'll start my training, the first step to becoming a supreme SOLDIER. That's the reason why I'm here. I don't know why I can become so supreme though." He shrugged.  
  
Just as he finished the sentence, the door screeched open and a middle-aged woman strode into the room carrying a tray with a bowl of murky green steaming liquid. Mako food. She placed it on Sephiroth's bed, not even looking up at him and then exiting the room- the door locking behind.  
  
"What the hell?" Hollene stared at the food. "They give you this crap?" She grabbed the spoon and stirred the gloopy liquid round and round. "But then again, I didn't get much better food. Rice and bread mainly."  
  
"Mmmn." Sephiroth mumbled, deep in thought.  
  
There was silence as Hollene examined the cramped room. "This used to be my room." She said.  
  
"I figured that." Sephiroth replied. "I saw your name scraped on the wall under the bed."  
  
"I was bored." Hollene grinned. "It's hard when you always have to run around and work for hours on end, but it's even harder when you have to sit and wait in a tiny room for hours on end."  
  
"I know." Sephiroth nodded. "I hate Hojo for that, and I hate him now even more than before."  
  
"Why?" Hollene asked.  
  
"Because he gave me the room that someone died in."  
  
"Well technically I didn't die in it." Hollene explained.  
  
Sephiroth rolled his eyes. "You know what I mean."  
  
"I was always trying to escape." Said Hollene, "I made a different escape plan every day. Of course, none of them worked. I just wanted to see my family again, they don't even know that I'm here."  
  
"What do you mean?" Sephiroth questioned.  
  
"I was snatched off the street one day by these SOLDIERS. They said that I was different from other children and I was needed in the building's scientific experiments. I put up a huge fight, kicking and screaming. I was determined not to go." She sighed nostalgically.  
  
There was suddenly a sharp ringing noise in Sephiroth's mind, he fell to his knees and clutched his head shaking it side to side. He could hear heavy breathing and footsteps.  
  
Hollene backed away, looking at Sephiroth like he was a total lunatic. When Sephiroth snapped out of it he rolled onto his side, breathing rapidly in exhaustion on the floor- his platinum hair veiling his face. "What the hell?" Hollene raised one eyebrow.  
  
"The Mako." Sephiroth spluttered, getting up and lying on the creaky bed face-up. "Don't worry about it... er... what were you saying about escaping?"  
  
Hollene shook her head. "I know you were seeing something."  
  
All of a sudden, the door flew open and Sephiroth jumped with fright. It was Hojo.  
  
"Be at the lab in five minutes." Hojo sneered. "And I MEAN five minutes." He exited the room and closed the door.  
  
Sephiroth brushed himself off and got up. He walked over to the dresser and tapped at the mirror in awe. When he saw Hollene give him a funny look he stopped. "I know it only works for you, but I'm just curious."  
  
He picked up a blunt comb on the wooden dresser and tugged it through his waist-length knotty hair. Then he straightened his collar and stepped towards the door.  
  
"You're not really going to go, are you?" Hollene rushed towards him.  
  
"Are you out of your mind? I have to go, he'd go mental if I didn't." Sephiroth replied, hurriedly.  
  
Hollene grabbed Sephiroth. "Don't go, you can't go. Look. Before I went to my first Mako test I had a funny vision like you had a minute ago. In my vision I was in the lab and I fell of something and hit the floor. I became really scared afterwards, even though I was reassured."  
  
Sephiroth brushed her off. "My vision wasn't anything like that, and besides, this isn't my first Mako test." He thought back to his last injection, more painful than usual. "Hojo has been using Mako more strongly on me, but that's nothing. I need Mako to become supreme, that's why."  
  
"You can't go. You're the only one that can see me." She whispered.  
  
"It's not like I'm gonna die." Sephiroth said, awkwardly. "I really HAVE to go now." He darted out of the room not bothering to close the door.  
  
Hollene stood in the doorway and shouted after him. "You don't know what you're in for!"  
  
But he didn't hear.  
  
o0o  
  
sugary-flames: What's gonna happen to Sephy? Please review and I'll update soon!  
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